The last time I spoke with Juniper Networks, Altor Networks was on the call as well.  They’d conducted a study together at VMworld 2010, finding some mutually beneficial client needs to address through their joint product offerings.  It was a sign of things to come, as this partnership eventually blossomed into the acquisition of Altor Networks.

This marks Juniper’s fifth acquisition this year, but the $95 million in cash spent on Altor has special meaning for the company’s plans to secure virtual environments.  The relationship began over a year ago, even before Juniper jumped at an opportunity to invest in Altor during its last funding round.

“Overall I’m thrilled with the prospect of working with the Altor team,” says Doug Murray, senior vice president and general manager of Service Layer Technologies at Juniper.  It was my second interview with Juniper, and I was anxious to hear more about the relationship I’d seen growing these past months.

“I’ve had the privilege of working with their CTO and team over the past year,” Murray explains. “We’ve had an opportunity to get a sense of them and the market. If you look at where Juniper has been successful over the past year or two, it has really been rooted in in-line security. If you look at our firewall securities or app-secure securities, we’ve made phenomenal in-roads in terms of security.

“We’ve taken over 48% of data network security. For us, that’s a huge milestone. We went from being a major player in the market with low 30s in terms of market share percentage, to nearly 50%.  As technology evolves and the threat landscape changes in data center architecture, we want to be a leader in areas where attacks are going to occur.”

This is where Altor really comes in, as they’d been helping to fill some of Juniper’s holes regarding virtual server protection.  This move from the physical to virtual has been a bumpy road for many in the industry, with some companies completely changing their direction and product line up.  What’s been characteristic of this shift, however, are team-ups amongst industry players.

This has enabled the likes of Juniper to address the needs of their existing clients, as Murray shares the company perspective.  “What we’ve seen with the advent of cloud computing is that there’s a massive shift around virtualization.  Our customers have been asking us more and more about securities of virtualization and how they secure the environment.”

Enhancing their own product line, retaining customer relations and anticipating the cloud security needs of the future, Juniper sought a true partnership with Altor.  While the acquisition is still fresh, Juniper’s ongoing relationship with Altor is easing the transition.  Already, Juniper has set full integration into motion, even preserving some of the initiatives Altor had started on prior to the buy out.

“[Altor has] set itself up as a leader over the past three years, providing virtual securities and prevention, similar to what we do, but it actually sits on the server,” Murray concludes. “It allows us to have a very effective answer in cloud computing and security for virtualization, and tie them to systems that [clients] already use from us.  It’s very complimentary.”